Languages of Muslim countries
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Muslims believe that God revealed the Qur'an to the Muhammad literally, word-for-word, in the Arabic language. Thus, Arabic is regarded as the holy language of Islam.However, there is no single "Muslim language" per se, as Islam, the faith of Muslims, is shared by people of many different ethnicities and languages.
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[edit] Majority Muslim countries
[edit] Middle East
- Iranians speak Persian, Kurdish, Luri, Azerbaijani, Baluchi, and a number of other languages. (See Persian language#Dialects and close languages and Category:Languages of Iran)
- Afghanistan has three major languages, Pashto, Dari, and Uzbek, each belonging to ethnic groups (tribes) with the same names.
- Jordan, Iraq, Syria and the Arabian Peninsula Arabic
- Turkish people speak Turkish, a Turkic language very different from Arabic.
- Muslims of the Caucasus use numerous languages from three families: Turkic, Northeast Caucasian and Northwest Caucasian.
[edit] Africa
- Morocco: Besides the official Standard Arabic being used by official bodies, as is the case in most Arabic-speaking countries, Moroccan Arabic, also known as Darija is the colloquial language. It is grammatically simpler, and has a less voluminous vocabulary than Standard Arabic. As in Algeria, most Moroccan Arabs live in the north of the country. Other Moroccans speak Berber languages such as Tachelhit and Tarifit.
- Berber languages can also be heard in Algeria, notably including Kabyle, spoken by the Kabyle Berbers in the north-east of Algeria. Another Algerian language is Chaoui, spoken by the Chaoui, south-east of the Kabyle region. See Languages of Algeria.
- Libya: Libyan Arabic
- Tunisia: Tunisian Arabic
- Mauritania: The official language of the country is Arabic, but common people of Arab-Berber origin use a distinct variety known as Hassaniya. Many people in the south of the country speak one of the national languages, such as Pulaar, Soninke or Wolof. These are also spoken in Senegal.
- Nigeria: primarily Hausa, but some Yoruba and Igbo speakers are also Muslim.
- Sudan: primarily a Sudanese dialect of Arabic
- Somalia: people primarily speak Somali which is one of the Cushitic languages.
[edit] Central Asia
- Muslims of Central Asia speak Turkic languages such as Uzbek, Uighur and Turkmen, excluding Tajikistan where a variety of Persian is spoken
[edit] South Asia
- Afghanistan: Pashto, Balochi, Dari
- Pakistan: Urdu, Pashto, Dari, Balochi, Punjabi, Sindhi, Hindko
- Bangladesh: Bengali, written in Bengali script not Arabic script
[edit] Southeast Asia
- Indonesia, the most populous "Muslim country" in the world speak Indonesian, other regional languages and dialects, the most widely spoken of which is Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese
- Malaysia: Malay
[edit] Europe
- Bosnia (at least the Muslim component of federation; Bosniak population is almost exactly half of total population): Bosnian
- Albania and the newly declared (mostly unrecognised) republic of Kosovo: Albanian
- Al-Andalus: the former Islamic part of the Iberian peninsula had substantial population of Muladis and Catholics, that spoke Romance Mozarabic languages. The Islamic conquerors spoke Arabic and Berber. Christians and Jews used Latin and Hebrew as their religious language, but Arabic became the language of culture for all the population.
[edit] Countries with significant Muslim minorities
[edit] South and West Asia
- India: India has the world's second largest Muslim population, though Kashmiri-speaking Kashmir is the only Muslim-majority state of India. Indian Muslims often share the Indian language spoken by non-Muslims of their state or locality; an ambiguous case is Urdu which forms a diasystem with Hindi and is considered the mother tongue of Muslims in the Hindi belt, though there are also some Urdu speakers in South India where it is a completely distinct language from the local Dravidian languages. Urdu is one of the official languages of India in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Andhra Pradesh.
- Israel: Arabic
- Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka's Muslim population mainly consists of Sri Lankan Moors who speak a creole of Tamil.
[edit] East Asia
- China: A variety of languages are spoken by Chinese Muslims. Uyghurs in Xinjiang speak the Uyghur language, while the Hui generally speak Mandarin Chinese.
- Philippines: primarily Maguindanao, Maranao, Tausug and other languages in Mindanao. Some Tagalog speakers are Muslims.
- Singapore: English, Malay,Tamil, other Indian languages such as Punjabi and Urdu and a confirmed but uncounted minority speak some variety of Chinese
[edit] Americas
- Canada: English and French
- United States: English
[edit] Europe
- France: French
- Germany: German
- Netherlands: Dutch
- Russia: Russian, Chechen and other languages of the Caucasus, Tatar and Bashkir
- United Kingdom: English
[edit] Variations in Arabic
Spoken Arabic has many different 'branches'. Whether these are to be considered mere dialects or separate languages is a question of usually politically motivated debate. Many varieties of Arabic are treated as languages in linguistics, as well as being recognized as such by many of their speakers and in a few countries. The main branches of Arabic are Levantine Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Gulf Arabic, Egyptian Arabic and Maghrebi Arabic. Maltese is a descendant of an Arabic dialect, but spoken by a non-Muslim population.
